Australian Environment Minister walks off the stage after delivering Australia’s ambition poor statement.

It has been a hectic two weeks for negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change conference, meeting in the heart of Poland’s coal province of Silesia. The conference was due to close on Friday 14 December, but intense negotiations continued overnight and were only finalised on Saturday evening.

The Paris rulebook was (mostly) landed to continue the momentum from Paris in 2015, and this was a vital measurement of the conference success, but some elements were just too contentious to achieve consensus and have been pushed forward to COP25 meeting in Santiago, Chile in 2019.

“The next steps are clear. In 2019, dialogue must give way to action. The Talanoa Dialogue must give way to the Talanoa Call for Action, which acknowledges the importance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, of halving global emissions by 2030 and of achieving net-zero-emission, climate-resilient economies.

All governments must now return home and launch or ramp up domestic review processes to prepare new or enhanced NDCs, and develop long-term emissions strategies. To achieve this, they must work closely with all members of the Grand Coalition, including sub-national governments, the private sector and civil society. We expect all countries to come to the UN Secretary-General’s summit in September 2019 prepared to show concrete progress and stronger NDCs. As a global community, we cannot accept anything less.”